Vineyard Gardens in Egypt

Next to trees, the Old Period seems to have valued vineyards. We do not know the actual
beginnings of garden-making. Pictures from the Fourth and Fifth
Dynasties show the whole story of cultivating the grape: how
it begins to ripen, how guards chase away the birds with sticks,
how it is gathered, how it is trodden, and how the must is poured
into tall, pointed vessels without feet. In the earliest days they
seem to have grown the vines on arbours; that is, they stuck up
stakes and set a transom across. The oldest hieroglyph for Wine
shows this (Fig. 6).

FIG. 6. WINE ARBOUR OF THE OLD KINGDOM

But even in the Old Period they began to substitute posts for
the rough wooden props, and from these there came in the New Period
their beautiful, finely painted pergolas. Arbours were often round,
which made them prettier. (Fig. 7),

FIG. 7. A ROUND VINE ARBOUR, BENI-HASSAN

A second hieroglyph shows that this form was a deviation from
the original straight lines. In the Middle Period, and still more
in the New Period, these ideas were developed in an ever more
pleasing way. Right into the New Period, vineyard arbours were the
centre and chief ornament of all gardens.